How to Replace Skirting Boards

Replacing skirting boards may be a tricky and daunting task, but certainly not impossible. You just need to do it just right.

Redecorating the house can be a very challenging thing to do. You would have to evaluate which parts need to be replaced and which can just be repaired or painted over. If you have skirting boards in your home, they can be especially tricky to remove and replace. In case you get it wrong, not only will you end up ruining the plaster work of your walls, but you can also damage the floor. It is important that you should remove and replace your skirting boards in just the right way.

How do you remove and replace skirting boards? Here is a step-by-step guide to getting this task done right.

1. Use a wrecking bar to pry the boards away from the wall. What you do is to grab the hooked end of the bar and to slip the bladed end between the skirting and the wall. As protection to the wall, you can slide a piece of wood between the wall and the blade of the wrecking bar.

2. Never pull the skirting boards off from your wall all in one go. Pry it gently off along several points until it has sufficiently loosened. Doing this will prevent the wall from tearing as you remove the skirting from it.

3. Another thing you should look out for when pulling the skirting from the wall is for screws. Was the skirting screwed on or nailed? If it is screwed on, you should remove the screws first before you totally prise the skirting from the wall.

4. Once you have removed the skirting boards, check if you can still use the fixing points where the boards were originally nailed to the wall. Reusing these fixing points to install will minimise the number of holes on your wall, as well as the damage that can ensue from them. However, if your old fixing points are far too gone to be of any use, feel free to use new fixing points and just plug the old ones with mortar.

5. Make sure that the corners of your skirting boards meet cleanly. For external corners, mitre the boards so they meet at a perfect 45-degree angle. For internal corners, what you do is to transfer the profile of one of the boards to the other with a pencil and then cut along the lines with a coping saw.

6. After preparing the boards, you can fit it in place along your wall. You can nail it through the fixing points you have assigned previously, either using the old fixing points or making new ones. An option you can use in place of nails is wood glue.

7. Do not worry about gaps between the skirting boards. It is inevitable, unless you are sure that the alignment of your walls is absolutely perfect. To fix these gaps, just put flexible filler in them.

Replacing skirting boards may be a tricky task to do. But this task can be simple if you know how, and if you get it right, you will have beautiful-looking skirting boards.

For high quality skirting boards in a huge range of architraves and woods, make sure to visit SkirtingBoards.com.

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